Kaz Hirai took to a Tokyo stage today to give us a peek at the Playstation's future, and he let slip a couple of interesting tidbits. First, Sony will be launching a new program called "Life with Playstation" that will give users real time news and weather, using a globe metaphor reminiscent of the Wii's News Channel. Of course, since the PS3 has considerably more horsepower under the hood, the globe is a rendered weather satellite image showing cloud patterns, and it also supports geo-tagged photos and other content. Kaz also previewed the video-download service set to launch next month at E3, which will allow you to download or stream video to the PS3 and PSP. The store looks a lot like the current PlayStation Store, and it looks like HD rentals will run around $6 while SD purchases will clock in around $13 when it launches in the States this summer. We'll learn a lot more at E3, presumably, but for now we'll just settle for a decent screen shot of that globe interface.

-- Engadget from PS3FanBoy



June 26, 2008 - Sony held a group business briefing in Tokyo today to share its plans for 2008 to 2010. Taking up a good chunk of that time was Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai, who introduced new non-game initiatives for the PlayStation brand.

The company's long awaited video on demand service will target PlayStation 3 and PSP, adding movies and television programs to the PlayStation Network on top of the current game content. Videos will be sold through a video store on the network and will be viewable both in download and streaming form.

America will get the first shot at the video service this summer. The program will then continue on to Japan and Europe.

While further details will be announced at E3 next month, sample images of the video store shown at the press conference resembled the current PlayStation Store, right down to windowed video previews of content. The sample store image had buttons allowing the user to toggle between video store and game store, suggesting that PS3 users will have to access just one main shop interface to get all their downloadable content.

Categories of video content in the sample images included "New Arrivals," "Movies," "Television," "Anime," "HD Only," "Rentals," "Purchase", and "Top Downloads." The sample images also listed pricing for a couple of titles: a Ghost Rider rental in HD at $5.99 and a Ghost Rider purchase copy in SD at $12.99. These prices are presumably unofficial.

PlayStation products are just the start for Sony's video plans. By 2010, Sony plans on expanding the download service to televisions, PCs, and mobile sets.

In addition to the new video service, Sony also unveiled a brand new initiative: Life with PlayStation. This new program will offer real time news updates and weather to PlayStation 3 users via an interactive globe interface. The globe interface displays recreations of the weather and shows headlines as you move to different locals. The headlines can be clicked on to open up more details in a browser window. Users can play music off their PS3 in the background as they use this service.

Future plans for the Life with PlayStation service could go beyond just the globe. Hirai mentioned the possibility of introducing a timeline interface for letting PS3 owners sort and view their photographs chronologically.

Sony also addressed the PlayStation Portable's multimedia functionality today. Sony will be expanding the portable's network functionality, and will at long last offer direct connection to the PlayStation Store some time this fiscal year.

-- ps3.ign.com

MS loses billions MORE.  What's your point?  Let me know when MS works it's way out of that $6+ billion hole. 

Quote:
Sony's fiscal 2008 annual report delineated potential risk factors to its investors, outlining that "the large-scale investment required during the development and introductory period of a new gaming platform may not be fully recovered." The loss figures were provided as an example of the "significant negative impact" introducing a new platform can cause at first.

"In the past, large-scale investment relating to capital expenditures and research and development for the manufacture of key components, including semiconductors supplied for [PlayStation 3] was also recorded within the Electronics segment," the company said.

In order to stay competitive, said Sony, it had to invest large amounts of money in research and development to introduce the PlayStation 3 into the market, and these sorts of expenditures don't always get recouped, especially if a platform "fail[s] to achieve such favorable market penetration... resulting in a significant negative impact on Sony's profitability."

Even if it can recoup its investment, Sony said, it's still possible to have lost large amounts of money on the platform's introductory period, and even a successful PS3 might take a while to replace what it cost to produce. These possible outcomes are currently a risk for the company, Sony said.

The company starts to sells a product worth far more than what they are selling it for.  Even so, some people STILL want to be sooo negative about things.  Some people just can't survive without hating.  Sony's plans even states that it would lose money for at least the first two years.

That link Calidain provided has NOTHING to do with this thread title.  Wow...just wow.    Life must truly be sad for some people.
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Anyway, I think this service has potential to be great!  I'm sure there will be more info on this at E3.